Community Insight Australia, Business Plan, 2014
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Design By .COM.AU Australia Insight Community This report is presented by Social Impact Hub. Written by: Max Huang, Monti Daryani, Luis Nunez and Vruchi Waje Supervised by: Jessica Roth and Lopa Mehrotra. November 2014 Executive Summary While hundreds of publicly available datasets are released everyday, many organisations do not have the in-house analytical capabilities to better target the work they are doing. Community Insight Australia is a platform that presents this data in easy to generate and analyse, user-defined reports, maps and information sets. It aims to provide not-for-profits, housing providers, corporations, local and state government agencies with the information they require to design better targeted solutions to solve local problems. Locally and internationally the competition for Community Insight Australia is strong, but what sets it apart is its user centred, unrestrictive interface, which means users can start geographical analytics immediately. Community Insight Australia has an exclusive licensing agreement with Community Insight UK, who will provide all back-end and technical support. The Founder of Community Insight Australia is Emma Tomkinson who has worked with the UK precedent and understands the problem that the Community Insight platform solves. The initial capital required is $143,185. This includes a one-off licensing fee to the UK parent organisation. With a total addressable market valued at $2.1 billion and the increasing importance of data mining, Community Insight Australia is poised for steady growth by selling into the public, social, and private sectors. Community Insight Australia employs a subscription-based pricing model, and forecasts to break-even and start repaying investors within the third year of operation. 1 Who We Are THE VISION OF COMMUNITY INSIGHT AUSTRALIA IS TO EMPOWER ORGANISATIONS TO HELP THEM CHANGE THE AUSTRALIAN COMMUNITY LANDSCAPE. expansion of a UK Like all businesses, Community Insight based company, social enterprises Australia can Community Insight operate in commercial Launching the instantaneously generate UK. Established in markets, needing Geographical Information reports, tables and charts 2012, Community to generate a profit System (GIS) web-based increasing the efficiency Insight UK is a joint from their trade. tool, Community Insight at which people can project between However, unlike other Australia will assist in understand their local Housing Associations’ businesses, social providing Australian area of interest. In-depth Charitable Trust enterprises exist to fulfil local governments, understanding of the local (HACT) and Oxford their overriding and housing providers, social communities will allow Consultants for Social specific social purpose; enterprises, not-for-profit organisations to better Inclusion (OCSI). this is at the heart of organisations as well target their programs Community Insight UK every social enterprise, as corporations, the and ensure community has been successfully driving everything capabilities of mapping services are underpinned operational for the it does. Community their geographical by the best possible past two years with an Insight Australia will area of interest, to knowledge. Saving time impressive clientele operate as a social better understand their and money, Community of 50 UK housing enterprise, investing local communities. Insight Australia can providers (Please see 75% of its profits back The web-based tool give the most relevant Appendix B – UK Clientele). in the development of assists in generating, and up-to-date data the company. collating and analysing on communities, with The organisation publicly available data, no need for its users is now prepared to allowing the users to to invest in specialised focus its direction identify patterns based data-mapping tools, on the Australian on parameters such consultancy, software or market creating a new as income levels, personnel. Community distribution channel for transportation or age etc. Insight Australia is an their existing business. Celebrating communities, by creating insight. Policy-makers want to target social programmes In 2013, UK housing think-do-tank HACT and social to areas of greatest need. Not-for-profit service policy data experts OCSI launched Community providers want easy access to information about Insight. It is a web-based tool that allows users to the changing nature of the communities they explore social indicators of need quickly and easily, work in. Local councils want to understand their using constantly updated, reliable, geo-coded population, to provide services that meet the data. Both organisations are social enterprises needs of local communities. Philanthropists want and keen to support the translation of the tool to to invest in communities that need development. Australia to serve a similar purpose. Businesses want to know the demographics and needs of the people in the areas they establish their operations. For the first time, a new big-data tool from the UK enables non-expert users to easily create social profiles of the communities they work with. Goals & Objectives Achieve Sustainable Operations Social Impact Empower Users Community Insight Australia aims In order to service data-users and The ultimate outcome that to equip organisations working ultimately deliver social impact Community Insight Australia has with community related data, to to the communities, Community been established for is to increase easily conduct data analysis and Insight Australia needs to achieve social impact. reporting without the requirement long-term sustainability. for data analysis expertise. 1. Break even in 2-3 years 1. Increase the users’ understanding 1. Achieve high awareness among of the communities they work with potential users 2. Payback investors in 3-5 years 2. Enable users to identify communities 2. Be utilised by all organisations who 3. Keep reinvesting 75% of the profit in highest need of their services via have a need to better understand into the development of the organisation comparative analysis communities and providing subsidised pricing to not-for-profits that cannot afford its subscriptions. 4 Industry Overview Spatial technology has been adopted across Australia. In 2012, the Australian GIS (geographic information system) industry was estimated to be worth $2.1 billion. This includes all the corporations that can benefit from geographical analytics, 56,000 not-for-profits, 404 housing providers, 565 local councils and 75 state government departments around Australia. This industry overview is however primarily focused on the local government sector. GIS technology is used in certain local councils in all of the states of Australia. According to the 2013 GIS Benchmark Study (SSSI and Esri, 2013), 68% of the respondents believed that the value of GIS technology was widely understood within their councils. • Application of GIS by government Within the government sector, the key areas in which local councils use the GIS technology are asset management, customer service, emergency management and planning and analysis of services. In particular, asset management, customer service and planning, and analysis of services are areas in which the technology’s current application is at its most extensive. (Please see Appendix A for details of NSW government sector) In terms of improving transparency and accountability, local councils can achieve several benefits by employing GIS technology: 1) Facilitating greater communication with the public, 2) Enabling integration and consistency across their technological platforms, 3) Improving their internal decision-making abilities, 4) Serving as a data management tool for reporting, and 5) Supporting regulatory and legislative changes. • Investment in GIS technology According to the same benchmark study mentioned above, 85% of local councils indicated that all departments within their organisation have access to GIS technology (SSSI and Esri, 2013). Figure 1 shows the level of interest among local councils in increasing investment in GIS technology. • GIS deployment and platform As the study revealed, the GIS platforms used in the government sector are through servers, desktops, mobiles and cloud services. As shown in the Figures 2 and 3 below, in most of the cases, GIS is deployed with an enterprise server license. Desktop and server are the most utilised platforms. Figure 1 Investment in GIS Technology Figure 2 GIS Technology platforms Figure 3 Means of GIS usage Product Overview Community Insight Australia will launch an online community mapping and reporting software that enables users to use publicly available data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and obtain valuable insights regarding local communities. The web-based tool will allow organisations to understand any selected community or area on parameters such as population trends, income distribution, education level, crime rates, household data, transport information and many others. There are over 30 parameters to choose from. The software allows users to select a particular area or draw on a map creating their own customised area to analyse. 6 YOU CAN SELECT AN AREA FROM THE LIST, OR IF YOU WISH TO ANALYSE A PARTICULAR AREA, YOU CAN SIMPLY DRAW YOUR OWN CUSTOM AREA ON THE MAP. 7 YOU CAN ANALYSE AREAS BASED ON PARAMETERS SUCH AS POPULATION, INCOME, AGE, NUMBER OF CARS IN A HOUSEHOLD, TRANSPORT AVAILABILITIES, GENDER, ETC. THERE ARE OVER 30 PARAMETERS TO CHOOSE FROM. YOU CAN EVEN COMPARE TWO AREAS, OR COMPARE ALL